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This is a really poor take. At no point in our history is there anything approaching a sudden cessation of human industry and activity that is core to your thou

This is a really poor take. At no point in our history is there anything approaching a sudden cessation of human industry and activity that is core to your thought experiment. You are comparing geologic, astronomical, and evolutionary changes that are incredibly gradual for the most part when compared to human activity. By using your exact same logic I can easily "prove" that the massive increase in CO2 that has happened in the past 150 years is impossible. Your analogy is exactly like saying that since the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Tunnel_State_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Tunnel_State_Park took a million years to form, it's impossible for humanity to create 1000 foot tunnel in less than a million years.

robomartin 5y ago
> By using your exact same logic I can easily "prove" that the massive increase in CO2 that has happened in the past 150 years is impossible. No. You cannot. You see, you are not asking the right questions and are giving in to folklore. This is a fair question, yes: How were we able to screw this up so badly in just 150 years? How is that even possible when we've only been significant, at an industrial scale, for just a few centuries? This is an excellent question and one that should lead to further inquiry rather than dismissal. Well, I asked myself this very question years ago, as I begun my attempt to understand what was real and what was not. The answer first requires that we understand how it is that atmospheric CO2 fluctuated by about 100 ppm on a roughly 100K year cycle when humanity was virtually insignificant. The answer to this question is brutally simple: Massive continental scale fires burning without any artificial controls, well, forever. Over somewhere in the range of 25,000 years they provided enough CO2 to increase atmospheric concentration by 100 ppm. This is a reality today. For all the political bullshit floating around, nobody is talking about the elephant in the room, in the form of wildfires. Globally, wildfires today consume about 450 millions hectares of forest and other plant life. This translates into about 13.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon. The entire industrial base of the world today produces about 10 billion tonnes of carbon a year. Keep in mind that this is with humanity actively fighting forest fires to contain them to the extent possible. Right this minute we have a massive fire in northern CA, where an army of firefighters is battling the flames to gain control. Not too many centuries ago humanity lacked the capability to go up against forest fires at any significant scale. And so, they burned and burned and burned. And, over tens of thousands of years, they regularly produced a 100 ppm increase in CO2 concentration. And yet, this does not answer the question. Right? How did we do it so quickly? Again, simple: We burned entire forests (and more) at a rate never before seen in the history of this planet. Except, this time, the forests came in the form of highly dense oil, petroleum. Petroleum is the result of millions of years of brewing dead plants, dead animals and other chemicals with an unimaginable amount of energy. The same is true of coal, peat and natural gas. When we burn a gallon of oil we are, in effect burning an end product that is the result of compacting millions of trees and other biomass into the thick black good. We were able to do in a few hundred years what it would normally take nature a lot longer. In fact, without us burning "forests" this way, it would have taken nature about 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. OK, then, why can't we reverse it just as fast then? For one thing, Conservation of Energy and the realities of the task at hand. Simple thought experiment: You are on a spacecraft the size of a large modern warehouse, like a Home Depot. The idea is that there are no external inputs other than solar and other radiation. The air you have is it. You make a pile of wood in the center of this space and light it up. How much energy did it take you to start this fire? Very little. The energy it releases is in the wood. All you had to do is ignite it. So now you have smoke, particulate matter and all kinds of gasses spreading all over your very large spacecraft. The particulate matter is coating everything. The gases are going everywhere. You are now tasked with reversing your ecosystem to where it was before you burned the pile of wood. Will it take more or less energy than that which the wood pile released when ignited? More. A lot more. Ten times more. A hundred times more. A thousand times more. It is actually hard to even begin to calculate how much energy this cleansing this simple ecosystem would require. I can walk around your house spreading flour all over the place with very little effort. Removing that sugar requires far more energy and effort than what was expended causing the mess in the first place. In super simple terms, that's the problem with CO2. It is easy to create a mess by burning stuff. It takes no effort. If you light-up the entire Amazon forest and just let it burn you will generate more CO2 than likely generations of humans could possibly produce. Taking back that CO2, cleaning the mess, is a far more difficult, resource intensive task that requires an unimaginable amount of energy. To put it simply, it would likely be impossible. So, no, my conclusion and the observations that led to this realization are not incongruent with how we contributed to the problem. It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion. If one is observant enough and understands natural processes, it really isn't that difficult to understand how we got here and the fact that we do not have the ability to get out. We have to live with it. Which is where we should be focusing, not on the "save the planet" bullshit that will lead to nothing good.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  > It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion. That is what you have done, as opposed to thousands of scientists and engineers and others that are applying a lot of science to this. Hence your generally poor conclusion from poor rigor and understanding. There is no arguing that reducing and "fixing" anthropocentric climate change will require more energy expenditure than creating it in the first place. But that doesn't mean it is a priori impossible, and doesn't mean it will take 50,000 years to do so. This isn't a binary situation. It isn't "do nothing" or "repair all the damage done in a short amount of time". Those aren't the only options. This is hideously complex situation and problem and we likewise need a complex, multi-pronged approach going forward. CO2 reduction, mitigation, and fixation to start. Ecosystem collapse prevention and mitigation. Handling population. Massive education to handle people like you (and worse). Just because we already have flour spread around the room, doesn't mean we can't clean it up, and certainly doesn't mean we should continue to spread more flour around the room (let alone at an increasing rate!)
  - robomartin 5y ago
    You make a bunch of generalized comments and no argument whatsoever to counter anything I have claimed at all. For example: We know that, if we all left the planet today it would take somewhere in the order of 50K years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2. That is impossible to dispute. We have the data going back 800,000 years. In other words, we know how this planet, as a system without significant human input, behaves. That rate of change corresponds to 0.002 ppm per year, or 1 ppm every 500 years, which might be easier to visualize. What we have out there being pushed from every angle is that we can achieve a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 in, pick a number, 30 to 50 years. OK. Let's take the longer timeline because it makes for easier math. 50 years for 100 ppm reduction in average atmospheric CO2 concentration. That means we are claiming that we can achieve a rate of change that is ONE THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than if we all left the planet tomorrow. Sorry, that is preposterous. It's silly without even doing any math. We are saying we can affect a planetary-scale metric at a rate that is 1000 times greater than if we were not around at all. It is impossible. One might say: Well, we added 100 ppm in just a few hundred years. Yes, of course, sure, but that is a very different process. You cannot compare burning millions of barrels of oil per day with what it would take to go and capture what that process produced and negate our influence. Physics just doesn't work that way. Saying that thousands of scientists and engineers are working on this is also a misrepresentation. What people are working on is what governments and politics is funding. Nobody wants to stick their necks out because doing so would be career-ending. I mean, imagine someone in a funded research path coming out and basically saying that the entire narrative being pushed by our government is a fantasy. That's a sure way to go from scientist to full time Uber driver. You need to understand that reality doesn't work in clear altruistic black and white terms. I mean, look at what happened with COVID and the vaccine and the craziness surrounding all of it. Science isn't this pure thing where the truth is always driving the narrative. There are people who realized how wrong they were about the vaccine in the hospital bed just days before they stopped breathing. It is sometimes important to consider that you are not being told the truth. I don't mean this as a conspiracy or cover-up. Not at all. Things can derail simply because of the fact that, at the end of the day, money and power drives everything. If a university wants a hundred million dollar grant from politicians pushing the "sky is falling" narrative, they better fall in line. You won't find that in any contract, but it is very much a part of reality. In this way we have, sadly, corrupted science. Don't take my word for it. Take the time to read this paper and then come back. Stop insulting me and using the "shoot the messenger" approach, this approach does not negate the validity or soundness of any of my arguments. Read this. You will recognize the reputable source. Real science, not quackery. Then think about what you've been told and what you believe. Think about that this paper came out in 2014 and we have wasted at least that much time promoting absolute bullshit. Think about what we could have done instead. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

robomartin 5y ago

> By using your exact same logic I can easily "prove" that the massive increase in CO2 that has happened in the past 150 years is impossible. No. You cannot. You see, you are not asking the right questions and are giving in to folklore. This is a fair question, yes: How were we able to screw this up so badly in just 150 years? How is that even possible when we've only been significant, at an industrial scale, for just a few centuries? This is an excellent question and one that should lead to further inquiry rather than dismissal. Well, I asked myself this very question years ago, as I begun my attempt to understand what was real and what was not. The answer first requires that we understand how it is that atmospheric CO2 fluctuated by about 100 ppm on a roughly 100K year cycle when humanity was virtually insignificant. The answer to this question is brutally simple: Massive continental scale fires burning without any artificial controls, well, forever. Over somewhere in the range of 25,000 years they provided enough CO2 to increase atmospheric concentration by 100 ppm. This is a reality today. For all the political bullshit floating around, nobody is talking about the elephant in the room, in the form of wildfires. Globally, wildfires today consume about 450 millions hectares of forest and other plant life. This translates into about 13.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon. The entire industrial base of the world today produces about 10 billion tonnes of carbon a year. Keep in mind that this is with humanity actively fighting forest fires to contain them to the extent possible. Right this minute we have a massive fire in northern CA, where an army of firefighters is battling the flames to gain control. Not too many centuries ago humanity lacked the capability to go up against forest fires at any significant scale. And so, they burned and burned and burned. And, over tens of thousands of years, they regularly produced a 100 ppm increase in CO2 concentration. And yet, this does not answer the question. Right? How did we do it so quickly? Again, simple: We burned entire forests (and more) at a rate never before seen in the history of this planet. Except, this time, the forests came in the form of highly dense oil, petroleum. Petroleum is the result of millions of years of brewing dead plants, dead animals and other chemicals with an unimaginable amount of energy. The same is true of coal, peat and natural gas. When we burn a gallon of oil we are, in effect burning an end product that is the result of compacting millions of trees and other biomass into the thick black good. We were able to do in a few hundred years what it would normally take nature a lot longer. In fact, without us burning "forests" this way, it would have taken nature about 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. OK, then, why can't we reverse it just as fast then? For one thing, Conservation of Energy and the realities of the task at hand. Simple thought experiment: You are on a spacecraft the size of a large modern warehouse, like a Home Depot. The idea is that there are no external inputs other than solar and other radiation. The air you have is it. You make a pile of wood in the center of this space and light it up. How much energy did it take you to start this fire? Very little. The energy it releases is in the wood. All you had to do is ignite it. So now you have smoke, particulate matter and all kinds of gasses spreading all over your very large spacecraft. The particulate matter is coating everything. The gases are going everywhere. You are now tasked with reversing your ecosystem to where it was before you burned the pile of wood. Will it take more or less energy than that which the wood pile released when ignited? More. A lot more. Ten times more. A hundred times more. A thousand times more. It is actually hard to even begin to calculate how much energy this cleansing this simple ecosystem would require. I can walk around your house spreading flour all over the place with very little effort. Removing that sugar requires far more energy and effort than what was expended causing the mess in the first place. In super simple terms, that's the problem with CO2. It is easy to create a mess by burning stuff. It takes no effort. If you light-up the entire Amazon forest and just let it burn you will generate more CO2 than likely generations of humans could possibly produce. Taking back that CO2, cleaning the mess, is a far more difficult, resource intensive task that requires an unimaginable amount of energy. To put it simply, it would likely be impossible. So, no, my conclusion and the observations that led to this realization are not incongruent with how we contributed to the problem. It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion. If one is observant enough and understands natural processes, it really isn't that difficult to understand how we got here and the fact that we do not have the ability to get out. We have to live with it. Which is where we should be focusing, not on the "save the planet" bullshit that will lead to nothing good.

gilbetron 5y ago
> It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion. That is what you have done, as opposed to thousands of scientists and engineers and others that are applying a lot of science to this. Hence your generally poor conclusion from poor rigor and understanding. There is no arguing that reducing and "fixing" anthropocentric climate change will require more energy expenditure than creating it in the first place. But that doesn't mean it is a priori impossible, and doesn't mean it will take 50,000 years to do so. This isn't a binary situation. It isn't "do nothing" or "repair all the damage done in a short amount of time". Those aren't the only options. This is hideously complex situation and problem and we likewise need a complex, multi-pronged approach going forward. CO2 reduction, mitigation, and fixation to start. Ecosystem collapse prevention and mitigation. Handling population. Massive education to handle people like you (and worse). Just because we already have flour spread around the room, doesn't mean we can't clean it up, and certainly doesn't mean we should continue to spread more flour around the room (let alone at an increasing rate!)
- robomartin 5y ago
  You make a bunch of generalized comments and no argument whatsoever to counter anything I have claimed at all. For example: We know that, if we all left the planet today it would take somewhere in the order of 50K years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2. That is impossible to dispute. We have the data going back 800,000 years. In other words, we know how this planet, as a system without significant human input, behaves. That rate of change corresponds to 0.002 ppm per year, or 1 ppm every 500 years, which might be easier to visualize. What we have out there being pushed from every angle is that we can achieve a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 in, pick a number, 30 to 50 years. OK. Let's take the longer timeline because it makes for easier math. 50 years for 100 ppm reduction in average atmospheric CO2 concentration. That means we are claiming that we can achieve a rate of change that is ONE THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than if we all left the planet tomorrow. Sorry, that is preposterous. It's silly without even doing any math. We are saying we can affect a planetary-scale metric at a rate that is 1000 times greater than if we were not around at all. It is impossible. One might say: Well, we added 100 ppm in just a few hundred years. Yes, of course, sure, but that is a very different process. You cannot compare burning millions of barrels of oil per day with what it would take to go and capture what that process produced and negate our influence. Physics just doesn't work that way. Saying that thousands of scientists and engineers are working on this is also a misrepresentation. What people are working on is what governments and politics is funding. Nobody wants to stick their necks out because doing so would be career-ending. I mean, imagine someone in a funded research path coming out and basically saying that the entire narrative being pushed by our government is a fantasy. That's a sure way to go from scientist to full time Uber driver. You need to understand that reality doesn't work in clear altruistic black and white terms. I mean, look at what happened with COVID and the vaccine and the craziness surrounding all of it. Science isn't this pure thing where the truth is always driving the narrative. There are people who realized how wrong they were about the vaccine in the hospital bed just days before they stopped breathing. It is sometimes important to consider that you are not being told the truth. I don't mean this as a conspiracy or cover-up. Not at all. Things can derail simply because of the fact that, at the end of the day, money and power drives everything. If a university wants a hundred million dollar grant from politicians pushing the "sky is falling" narrative, they better fall in line. You won't find that in any contract, but it is very much a part of reality. In this way we have, sadly, corrupted science. Don't take my word for it. Take the time to read this paper and then come back. Stop insulting me and using the "shoot the messenger" approach, this approach does not negate the validity or soundness of any of my arguments. Read this. You will recognize the reputable source. Real science, not quackery. Then think about what you've been told and what you believe. Think about that this paper came out in 2014 and we have wasted at least that much time promoting absolute bullshit. Think about what we could have done instead. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...